Robert Redford....

....thank you.  Thank you for all you did for the movies, for the environment, for politics, for anyone who saw your luminous portrayals of every character you embodied.  How could you not have fallen in love with this man?  His beauty and his skill were bone deep.  I remember seeing Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid at a tiny theater in Carmel, Indiana, which at the time was not the metropolis it is now.  There was a tiny movie theater, an ice cream parlor, and lots of fields and woods way back when, and Mom took us to see this movie and I was....mesmerized.  Paul Newman was gorgeous and funny and sexy and smart and charismatic and charming; Robert Redford was....breathtaking in his silence, his brooding, his shyness offset by his boldness.  I had never seen anything like it - mind you, I wasn't even in my teens yet -- and I was deeply affected by this beautiful man.  When The Sting came out, my sister and I rode our bikes up the street to the movie theater to see it, going back twice more over the weekend because we couldn't get enough.  My crush on Robert Redford only deepened over the years as I grew up and realized how much this man offered in his silent, strong, beautiful way to the world.  I'm so deeply saddened by his loss and grateful that he'll always be with us on film, at Sundance, and in the depths of my being, the little girl who couldn't take her eyes off of this larger-than-life wonderful being who changed so many lives as his life expanded.  Thank you, Mr. Redford. The world is a better place for having had you in it.